Welcome to the American Story. Mostly true stories about what it is that makes America beautiful.

Heartbreaking, funny, inspiring, and endlessly interesting.

This is Chris Flannery with the Claremont Institute.

I call this one, How Sleep the Brave! How Sleep the brave, who sink to rest by all their country's wishes blessed.

When spring with dewy fingers cold returns to deck their hallowed mold. She there shall dress a sweeter sod than

fancy's feet have ever trod. By fairy hands their knell is wrung, by forms unseen their dirge is sung.

Their honor comes, a pilgrim gray, to bless the turf that wraps their clay, and freedom shall a while repair to dwell a weeping

hermit there. Abigail Adams quoted from memory,

this owed by English poet William Collins,

in a letter to her husband John,

mailed on Tuesday, June 20th, 1775.

She had just confirmed reports of the death of their dear friend and family doctor,

34-year-old Joseph Warren.

He had fallen gloriously fighting for his country, Abigail wrote, and those favorite lines of

Collins continually sound in my ears.

Warren had fallen just three days before in what came to be known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, where the British Army had driven colonial militia from their positions but suffered heavy losses.

He had been a leading Patriot since the Stamp Act crisis ten years ago, when he was just 24. It was he who sent Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride.

The Extralegal Massachusetts Provincial Congress commissioned him as a major general of the militia

just a few days before the battle.

But he chose to serve as a private soldier

and was killed on the third and final British assault.

He became immediately a martyr of the revolution.

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